Intellectual Property Law

Law Apps for iPhones (and Blackberry)

By Deven Desai

This article lists some general apps that one may want to add to an iPhone. The one that caught my eye, however, is the Federal Rules of Evidence. The company that provides the Rules, The Law Pod, also offer the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, Federal Rules of Bankruptcy, Federal Rules of Evidence, and the U.S. Constitution. Apparently more apps are to in the works too. If the company updates them wirelessly, these apps could be quite useful (FYI The Law Pod folks are smart enough to offer the products for Blackberry users as well).

Furthermore Law Pod claims “Because rather than embracing a traditional business model, after-tax profits from the sale of these applications will be used to provide financial aid in the form of grants and scholarships to law students in need.” That is a nice touch.

This move reminds me of an old film about medical school where med students pretended to know what they were doing and then pulled out a handy reference guide to check a diagnosis. To be clear, looking up information is a good thing. If I remember correctly, Akhil Amar urged his students to keep a pocket copy of the Constitution with them. This service solves the problem of carrying extra paper around. Of course, if one is giving a closed book exam, one now had even more reason to have students surrender all phones during the exam.

Image: WikiCommons
By: ALT1040
License: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

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Full post as published by Madisonian.net on June 24, 2009 (boomark / email).